Spray Away

By Karen O’Connor –

It had been a long flight from California to New York. I was tired but excited about the opportunity to speak at a large convention. Finally I arrived with time to spare before walking onstage to wow the crowd with the dynamic message I’d prepared and then rehearsed at least a dozen times. I checked into my hotel room, unpacked, rested my voice, and ordered hot tea with lemon and honey from room service. There wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought of––or so it seemed. I took time to press my business suit and apply my makeup carefully.

At the last moment I walked into the bathroom to refresh my lipstick and touch up my hair. A little spray would do the trick. I didn’t want even one hair to escape. I hadn’t paid the stylist thirty dollars for nothing.

I opened my purse, took out a small plastic bottle and turned this way and that in front of the mirror, taking charge of every stray hair. Spritz! Spritz! Even a stiff breeze couldn’t ruffle my tresses after that.

But something went terribly wrong. Instead of holding my hair in place, the entire ‘do’ collapsed into wet strands. I looked at the container in my hand, ready to pitch it out the sixteenth story window. So much for my professional coiffure––not yet twenty-four hours old. Indignant, I looked in the mirror, ready to return to the corner drug store and demand my money back. How could the clerk sell me this counterfeit when I expressly asked for a purse-sized bottle of hair spray?

Then I glanced at the label. Starry Night cologne. Oh for heaven’s sake. Where were my glasses when I needed them?

It was too late to start over. I had to walk out there and hold my own—regardless of how I appeared. Well, I smelled nice that day––but I didn’t look too swift!

I was pleased to see how well my audience paid attention. Every eye was on me––but probably not for the reason I hoped. I soon found out.

A woman came up to me after my presentation. It was clear she had a few words of encouragement for me after listening to my lament over the state of my hair. “You may not be the most attractive thing on the block,” she said, “but you’re a good speaker!”

The Love of God, from the Roots Up

By Carol Barnier –

“This is where we create the gold bowls that prayers are kept in.” The small group of newcomers moved along behind the winged angel tour guide and nodded as they viewed the large room of worker angels pouring gold into bowl-shaped molds.

The group shuffled along to a massive room that looked like an airplane hangar, open at the far end, with angels coming and going at a rapid rate. “This is our message dispatch room where delivery angels get their assignments to carry personal messages to folks on earth. Lots of serious stuff coming and going in this room.” Indeed, the looks on the faces of these angels were all business, even grim, but the occasional beaming smile crossed the face of a delivery angel when given some obviously joyful news. One can only imagine.

The small group moved down a long hallway, and on to a quieter wing. In a room off to the side sat a group of angels, each with an iPad™ looking device in their hands. They were chatting merrily with each other. There was no tension, no seeming deadline or urgency. There was even a seeming merriment in the exchanges between them.

“This is the hair counting room.”

“The what?” a confused tour group member immediately interjected.

“Hair counting. You know. . .even the very hairs on your head are numbered? In God’s word?”

The tour guide suggested they take a closer look and the group was allowed to mill about, spreading out in the room to get a sense of what was going on in much greater detail. The device held by each of the angels displayed the names of dozens of people, each name with a corresponding number. Every so often an angel would tap a name, note an increase in hair number, and return to the name to adjust the entry. It seemed a pretty easy assignment. But as the group of newbies moved on a bit, going deeper into the very long room, they noticed that the angels seemed busier, less chatty. And finally at the very end of the room, the angels were downright intense. They were constantly checking the names and adjusting the numbers. They clearly had more to deal with, and the demands of their increased work load evident on their furrowed faces.

Finally one of the group spoke up. “What’s happening here? Why are these guys so much busier than those at the start of the room?”

“The folks at the beginning of the room were tracking the hairs of babies.” The smiling guide continued. “That’s pretty easy duty. You add about 100 hairs a day and you’re done. But at the end here, we’re tracking folks over 50. They’re losing hairs at an alarming rate. And if the person gets a shampoo, you almost have to do a total recount.”

At that moment an angel taped his iPad and gleefully said, “Yay. We’re up two for a change!”

“Angel Jarrod. . .” Our guide directed his very serious tone at the delighted angel, who now looked up with a sheepish expression. “We’ve talked about this before. What is the rule?”

The angel dropped his winged shoulders, made an adjustment on his iPad, and said, “We don’t count stray chin hairs. It’s just not nice.”

“And what else?”

He dropped his head ashamedly and added, “Or nose hairs or ear hairs.”

I’m immensely grateful that God is so invested in us that He even numbers the hairs on our heads. I’m perhaps more grateful that He keeps that number to Himself.

The Preacher Who Put the Arson in Parson

By Connie Cavanaugh –

When my new husband took his first pastorate in a northern village, he thought he’d ignite some spiritual fire in the community. He went way beyond that.

The church’s parsonage perched atop a hill overlooking a lake. Gerry kept the lawns trimmed but the rocky slope below our bay window was impossible to mow. The grass and weeds were an unsightly tangled mess that marred the beauty of our lake view so I suggested that Gerry find a way to clean it up.

He watched our neighbor burn off his tall grass early in spring before the snow melted under the fence that encircled his property. Quick to recognize a good idea, Gerry planned to copy him. But it wasn’t until several weeks later, after a hot, dry spring that Gerry finally had a chance to tend to my nagging. He decided to surprise me for my birthday.

Off to work I went on the thirty-first of May, the day before my birthday, oblivious to what lay ahead. In the late afternoon, I returned to a vacant house filled with unsettling clues. A trail of sooty water marred the white linoleum between the front door and kitchen sink. A melted, misshapen plastic blob near the door, on closer inspection, turned out to be the charred remains of my garbage can liner – a wedding gift from a dear friend. A blackened soggy pile of rags beside the sink was all that remained of my colorful handmade heirloom throw rug from Auntie Ada. I was alarmed and upset.

I headed back outside where I spied a garden hose snaking over the lip of the hill toward the lake. I ran to the crest of the hill. Blackness! All the way to the lake, to the edges of our property and dangerously beyond, the ground was still smoldering.

Halfway down the hill, slumped atop a boulder holding a dribbling hose was what appeared to be a chimney sweep from Mary Poppins.

“Caawww-neee,” Gerry hallooed, giving a feeble wave. “I can’t leave my post. Come down.” I minced my way over the scorched earth, tottering on three-inch heels. My bedraggled spouse’s smoke-reddened eyes darted in all directions. He kept whirling around, shooting pitiful spurts at puffs of smoke. There were so many burn holes in the hoses a well-aimed spit would have had more volume.

The harrowing tale unfolded. Midmorning he had decided to clean up that unsightly grass as my birthday surprise. Just like our neighbor, he had matches and a cold drink. (The missing factor was the snowpack around the perimeter!) Always in a hurry, Gerry thought he’d speed things along. He fetched the can of gasoline. After pouring a line of gas along the top of the hill, he tossed a match. Kaboom!

He managed to save our house before he ran for help.

Five elderly women—the only people he found at home—and he waged a furious battle to subdue the runaway inferno that threatened to consume our village. The not-so-volunteer ladies’ brigade plunked Gerry on that rock with strict instructions to “Stay there, young man, and keep a sharp eye. Or else!”

“I’m starving,” Gerry lamented.

I headed uphill to fetch a sandwich and found my neighbor Florence on my verandah. Her hair was still wet from the shower and she had a glass of whisky, straight up, in one hand.

“What is it with you Baptist preachers and fire?” she asked, waving her empty hand. “The last guy did the same dang thing!”

The Tell

By Carol Barnier –

Sometimes you see something about an individual and it just speaks volumes to you about this person. For example, there’s this guy with devil’s horns imbedded under the skin of his skull. Now looks can be incredibly deceiving. I know that. But my first instinct when I see this guy is to think he probably doesn’t do scrapbooking. Or sell Amway. Or vote Republican.

Or Democrat.

Or any of the first ten possible party affiliations on any standard college political science list.

Maybe after Republican and Democrat and Independent and Green and Socialist and Communist. . .way down there, there’s this Beelzebub Wannabe Caucus that he’s shooting for. I don’t know. But ya gotta be careful. You can be really wrong about assumptions. He could run a preschool daycare program for indigent immigrants for all we know.

However, sometimes you just know you’re spot on.

There was this woman at my church. She was really new and had already volunteered to help us with VBS. I didn’t know her at all but she and I were asked to move some boxes from the furnace room in the basement up to the classrooms. So off we go. In she trots to this little furnace room, squats down to pick up a couple of the boxes, and when she does her jeans drop down a bit in the back. Now these were not those low rise puppies that descend so frighteningly that you’re suddenly reminded Crack kills. No. These were perfectly respectable jeans. Godly jeans. Jeans I might even wear. But out the back, like a kite set free to the wind, was a big old tag. To me it indicated two things.

1.) She wore granny panties that went all the way up to the top of her jeans and clearly covered every square inch of her behind and then some. No hip hugger, bikini cut, or heaven-forbid dental floss look to these puppies. These undergarments were THERE. . .and they were standing their ground.

2.) But the second thing it indicated, given tag’s current position, was that this woman’s underwear was inside out. Perhaps she’d dressed that morning in the dark, unaware of the current orientation of her undergarments. Perhaps she was fully aware of their reversed status but needed to get out the door to a waiting van full of her loving family. Or perhaps she saw that the underwear was inside out and she simply didn’t care. She couldn’t be bothered using her remaining brain cells and limited time on such fripperies as correctly oriented underwear.

And what could I determine from this littlest snippet of information about this woman?

I liked her.

Probably a lot.

We might even be soul mates.

I’m pretty sure there’s a chapter in the Bible on women like us—women who put no stock in outer appearance or apparel, women who look to serve, even in the dusty dungeons of the church furnace rooms. I know it’s not Proverbs 31 because there you’ll find quite a bit of pressure to have beautifully dressed family members wearing lots of scarlet and purple. There’s much weaving and storing up for the winter. Maybe the scripture I’m seeking has more to do with the verse I have painted on my laundry room wall. While other women might approach their laundry, look upon those many piles of soiled and dirty clothes with great pain and resignation, I just glance up at my verse, and find peace, inspiration and grace every time.
What’s it say?

“They were naked, and they were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:25)

Stop Barking!

By Jodi Whisenhunt –

Mine is a three-dog family. The neighbors to our west are a two-dog family; to our south, one-dog; southeast, another three-dog home. Our adjoining backyards are bound by six-foot tall, wood-slat privacy fences. However, none of these nine guardians believes those fences adequate security from the mangy mongrels on the other side, so they insist on barking and snarling and gnashing their teeth at each other, unseen adversaries that they are.

Many times I have pleaded with my poochies, “Seriously, dogs! You’ve been neighbors for years. Stop trying to eat each other through the fence!” To which the two little Germans respond with a smug dachshund look and the Aussie blue heeler’s hair stands higher on her shoulders. (If you haven’t spent much time around dachshunds, just imagine a teenager being reprimanded. OK, you now know the look I’m talking about!) With a farewell gnashing of teeth, my three usually cower to my bidding and saunter back inside.

Now, you would think after many years of residing in close proximity, that these animals—a species known for its scent recognition skills—would be quite familiar with each other. But no, each encounter is a new and fresh adrenaline rush, littering the air with loud shrills. And each time, I shake my head and think my dogs are like Pooh, “a bear of very little brain.” I love my dogs, but they cannot seem to love their neighbors. They continue to consider them enemies.

As humans, we are called to love both our neighbors and our enemies. Yet sometimes we do no better than these dogs.

Matthew 5:43 says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Many people stop right there and ignore verses 44-48. They find fault with their neighbor, whether the neighbor be a nearby resident or a regular acquaintance, and they camp out in resentment. They disregard the remainder of Christ’s advice, “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Do not smile and wave if inwardly you resent. Do not feign friendship, then slander when out of earshot. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:18). Stop sneering through the knot holes. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink” (Romans 12:20). And above all, love one another.

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